Translating for a Cat

Aslan, the cat, does not always respond to his name. 

When I say “Aslan,” he sometimes turns, sometimes doesn’t. It is tempting to think he recognises the word on some days and ignores it on others. Or maybe, that explanation is merely a comfort I give myself. What reaches him might not be the name itself. It could be the tone, the timing, or simply the fact that I am looking at him when I speak. 

Calling him, then, is not as simple as it seems. It already involves a kind of mechanism I use, a translation. I am taking something in my language and reshaping it, so it makes sense in his world.

Aslan has lived with me for a year. In that time, I have learned to read him in ways that feel natural. At seven a.m. and seven p.m., he inches closer to me and starts meowing nonstop, which always means he wants food. When he cannot open the door with his furry paws, he looks at me and meows again. He wants me to open it. Anytime he hears birds chirping — whether he is sleeping, eating, or being pampered — his eyes turn toward the windows: it is time for him to bird-watch. 

These meanings arrive quickly. I do not pause to think about them anymore. But if I slow down, everything becomes less certain. His meow at seven in the morning or evening is not the word “food.” It is just a sound. I turn it into a request because of where he is, what time it is, and how he moves. I take a set of signals and arrange them into something I can understand. The process is so immediate that it feels like recognition, but it is closer to interpretation.

Translation often works like this. 

It is a way of organising the fragments of understanding that I can gather through his movements, his meows, and his eyes. We do it with people too, though less consciously. When someone says “it’s fine,” we listen for something beyond the words. A pause, a shift in tone, a hesitation — these become part of what we understand. The sentence is only one part of it. The rest has to be assembled. 

With my cat, the gap is more visible. He does not share my language, so I cannot rely on words at all. Instead, I depend on patterns. Repetition helps. Over time, certain actions settle into meaning. But even then, nothing is fixed. There are days when he sits by the door and I open it, only for him to walk away. The translation fails, or perhaps it was never accurate to begin with.

This does not stop me from trying again. What changes, slowly, is not his behaviour but my attention. I begin to notice smaller differences: the way one meow is longer than another, the way he looks at me before making a sound — or doesn’t, the way he runs toward the stairs when I merely turn in their direction. These details do not form a complete language, but they make the space between us feel more shared, more ours. 

Translation, in this sense, is not about arriving at a final meaning. It is not even about some kind of absolute transference. It is about understanding, recognition, and being a witness to what the other might feel or hope to say. It is about staying with the process of getting closer. 

Even in human language, this closeness is not guaranteed. Words can separate as much as they connect. We rely on shared understanding, but that understanding is always partial. A single word can hold different meanings depending on who is using it, how, and why. If anything, living with my cat has made this clearer. It removes the illusion that meaning is stable. It shows how much communication depends on context, memory, habit, and sharing. There are moments when he comes and sits next to me without making a sound. Earlier, I might have tried to assign a reason to it. Now, I let it be. I simply enjoy it and give him his well-deserved pets. 

This is not a form of acceptance after failure, but something that feels more accurate. We often think of translation as something that happens between languages, but it begins earlier than that. It begins when we try to make sense of anything that is not fully clear — an expression, a gesture, a silence, a situation, an outburst, a meow, a purr, and even a hiss. 

It begins when we divide experience — our own, and our reading of someone else’s — into parts.  Then, we try to connect them again. With Aslan, this happens every day. I call him, he responds or doesn’t, and I understand. He makes a sound, I respond, and he understands. 

Neither of us fully knows the other, but so much still passes between us. Not the “exact” meaning, but enough — something that contains more love than the exact.